Can you prove the world and the Universe exists? The simple argument is you can just point around to things that exist, thus proving their existence. However, in the philosophy of Solaqlism, nothing outside your mind exists. Everything you see, hear and experience is all real to you, but you can"t prove that other people exist.One argument against this theory is that the world is too big and complex just to exist in our own head. However, it may not be as complex as you think. Let"s use the Grand Theft Auto series as an example of how this would be feasible. When you are in a specific location in the game, everything is there and visible. However, when you"re not in a location, that part of the world disappears. It only comes up when it"s necessary, making your own universe less complex.Regardless of how the Universe was created, the question arises as to what happens when you, the only person in the Universe dies? Well, sadly the Universe comes to an end. Everyone you know and love will cease to exist. Everything you worked for and achieved will disappear the instant you die. On the bright side, you will be master of the Universe while you"re alive.

"What Donald Trump is doing is representing the absolute heartbreak, and anger, and frustration at a government gone mad."

At 1/29/2016 7:46:19 PM, brontoraptor wrote:Can you prove the world and the Universe exists? The simple argument is you can just point around to things that exist, thus proving their existence. However, in the philosophy of Solaqlism, nothing outside your mind exists. Everything you see, hear and experience is all real to you, but you can"t prove that other people exist.One argument against this theory is that the world is too big and complex just to exist in our own head. However, it may not be as complex as you think. Let"s use the Grand Theft Auto series as an example of how this would be feasible. When you are in a specific location in the game, everything is there and visible. However, when you"re not in a location, that part of the world disappears. It only comes up when it"s necessary, making your own universe less complex.Regardless of how the Universe was created, the question arises as to what happens when you, the only person in the Universe dies? Well, sadly the Universe comes to an end. Everyone you know and love will cease to exist. Everything you worked for and achieved will disappear the instant you die. On the bright side, you will be master of the Universe while you"re alive.

Yes you are the only one that exists, which means all those atheists you argue with..................are actually yourself...............TWIST !!!

"Seems like another attempt to insert God into areas our knowledge has yet to penetrate. You figure God would be bigger than the gaps of our ignorance." Drafterman 19/5/12

At 1/29/2016 7:46:19 PM, brontoraptor wrote:Can you prove the world and the Universe exists? The simple argument is you can just point around to things that exist, thus proving their existence. However, in the philosophy of Solaqlism, nothing outside your mind exists. Everything you see, hear and experience is all real to you, but you can"t prove that other people exist.One argument against this theory is that the world is too big and complex just to exist in our own head. However, it may not be as complex as you think. Let"s use the Grand Theft Auto series as an example of how this would be feasible. When you are in a specific location in the game, everything is there and visible. However, when you"re not in a location, that part of the world disappears. It only comes up when it"s necessary, making your own universe less complex.Regardless of how the Universe was created, the question arises as to what happens when you, the only person in the Universe dies? Well, sadly the Universe comes to an end. Everyone you know and love will cease to exist. Everything you worked for and achieved will disappear the instant you die. On the bright side, you will be master of the Universe while you"re alive.

I would say you better live your life to the fullest because that's all you get.

At 1/29/2016 7:46:19 PM, brontoraptor wrote:One argument against this theory is that the world is too big and complex just to exist in our own head. However, it may not be as complex as you think. Let"s use the Grand Theft Auto series as an example of how this would be feasible. When you are in a specific location in the game, everything is there and visible. However, when you"re not in a location, that part of the world disappears. It only comes up when it"s necessary, making your own universe less complex.

Except that video games are inherently stifled by hardware limitations. You don't exactly see screen tearing and pop in, in the real world, do you?

At 1/30/2016 3:45:09 AM, Casten wrote:I thought that was called solipsism.

At 1/29/2016 7:46:19 PM, brontoraptor wrote:Can you prove the world and the Universe exists?

Here's a sketch, Bronto. It loosely extends the work of information theorist, Claude E. Shannon, in his seminal 1948 paper A Mathematical Theory of Communication. [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org...]

Suppose you exist, you can count and reason, and have intentions (here I mean a desire to interact or do -- perhaps expressed as emotions, impulses, and movements of your body if you have one.)

Define a senseas a channel of signals:* a channel in the sense that the source may be unknown, however you can sample it on demand and distinguish it from other possible channels; and* signal is a stimulus which can vary, attached to the channel. You may or may not know the source, or whether the signal has meaning or purpose, but you can tell on which channel it occurred.

If the signal has repeated structure, you can arrange any structural repetitions into symbols, which are ontological arrangements of signal. Note that these symbols are identified by you -- they are not given to you by some other party. Thus they are potentially erroneous and incomplete. However, these structures can add to bigger structures, and form the basis of what we may come to call information.

Also, since senses too can be erroneous, we acknowledge a notion of noise: distortion that may alter or obscure the signal so much that you either interpret the wrong symbol, or cannot recognise a symbol in the signal. (Note that this is notionally information lost in transmission -- not error of recognition or interpretation.)

Without concern for mechanism, let us suppose that when you focus your intention a particular way, the signal changes in response, so that the symbols appearing in the channel are predicted in some part by the timing and nature of your intention. Note that you still don't know what, if anything, the symbols may mean, and because of possible noise on the channel, the signal you receive may be so distorted that you don't always get the result you expected. Moreover, the response may be complex, and the correlation between your intention and the responding symbols may take time to recognise.

But once that occurs, you can sample as much as you like. And when you do, you can demonstrate that:

* the signal is predicted by your intentions to a high degree of probability;* there is structure in the signal's response;* you can vary the structure by varying the time and quality of your intentions;* the structure is independent of your thought, but not your intentions; and* the signal and symbols continue to persist even when you do not exercise intention.

With only that evidence, I think you can demonstrate to a high level of confidence that something exists which is not your thought, nor your sense, that it reacts to your intentions, and that its reactions are at least partially predictable, even if you don't know what how they occur or what they mean.

At that point I think you can be confident that there's some sort of persistent world around you, exchanging information with you. The rest amounts to testing what information it may be, and exploring what it may suggest about the world in which you exist and your place in it.

Obviously, the more independent channels you have to access the same persistent world (e.g. touch, sound, sight, smell, hearing), and the more acute the sense and therefore the better the signals, the less the noise and the more structure in the symbols received, the more readily you can correlate symbols, and the easier it becomes to draw accurate conclusions.